Drug-Induced Arrhythmias, Precision Medicine, and Small Data

• Editorials
• arrhythmias
• azithromycin
• basic science research
• electrophysiology
• ion channels/membrane transport
• precision medicine

Precision medicine refers to new treatment and prevention strategies that take individual variability into account.¹ Toward that end, the National Institutes of Health Precision Medicine Initiative envisions supporting a research program to encourage creative approaches to precision medicine, test them rigorously, and ultimately use them to build the evidence base needed to guide clinical practice.² A major component of the Precision Medicine Initiative is the National Institutes of Health All of Us Research Program, which will engage ≥1 million volunteers living in the United States to contribute their health data over many years to improve health outcomes, fuel the development of new treatments for disease, and catalyze a new era of evidence based and more precise preventive care and medical treatment.³

See Article by Yang et al

The variable clinical response to drug therapy provides an especially compelling case for the promise of the precision medicine paradigm. A significant proportion of individuals treated with drugs display either little benefit, or even more problematic, develop serious and sometimes life-threatening adverse effects. Indeed, in 2014, as many as 253 017 serious outcomes, including 123 927 deaths, were reported through the Federal Drug Administration Adverse Events Reporting System.⁴ Among the more devastating adverse drug effects, seen with both antiarrhythmic and noncardiac drugs, are proarrhythmia and sudden cardiac death. The recognition of this problem has …